CHAPTER 01
A helicopter on standby
Algeria, nineteen sixty-two. A gas well has been burning for months. At the edge of the site, a helicopter waits on standby. Beside it is a coffin. The crew's leader later recalled that precaution.
Now this is something we never had to use and proud we didn't.
That was Red Adair. At Gassi Touil, a well called G-T-two is feeding a flame above the wreckage of its drilling rig. His crew must put out the fire, then regain control of the well.
CHAPTER 02
The men behind the names
Boots Hansen had served in the Navy's submarine force. Back in Houston, he painted signs with his father and drove stock cars for Red Adair. Then he went to work fighting well fires.
Here is Hansen in a later interview, recorded in nineteen seventy-nine.
And I've been doing this kind of work twenty-seven years.
Coots was Ed Matthews, a trained machinist who had worked for Reed Bit Company. He spent ten years with Halliburton, working as a roughneck, cementer and special-tools operator.
Both had worked in Myron Kinley's firefighting business. In nineteen sixty-two, they are members of Adair's crew. The Boots and Coots company is still years away.
CHAPTER 03
Water in the desert
Back at Gassi Touil, another rig drills for water. Crews dig storage pits and run supply lines across the site. That water has to keep flowing while men and machines work beside the fire.
Caterpillar D-eight tractors carry protective housings. Water monitors stand behind sheet-metal shields, with their nozzles aimed toward the fire. As the water starts flowing, men move into the spray to reach the wreckage.
Hot metal can reignite escaping gas. The crew has to clear the wreckage and protect the wellhead while it works.
A long boom reaches into the wreckage with a water-cooled hook. Sections of the drilling rig are dragged out of the heat. The drilling derrick, the mud tank, the pump: equipment that once helped drill the well now has to be pulled away from it.
The noise makes ordinary conversation useless close to the fire. A raised hand becomes an instruction. Someone signals for a valve to open; another man acts on it. In Adair's account, those hand signals are how the crew gets the job done over the roar.
Among the men is Charlie Tolar, a professional football player with the Houston Oilers. French workers and engineers are part of the operation too. At the entrance, a board tracks personnel moving through the work area and toward the well.
CHAPTER 04
The attempt
In April, the extinguishing attempt is postponed, then postponed again. The preparations continue while G-T-two keeps burning. At last, the crew moves in with the explosive charge.
The machine carries the charge toward the well. The crew places it and withdraws.
The flame is gone. The gas keeps coming. The crew now has to replace the damaged equipment while the well is still blowing.
CHAPTER 05
Find sound pipe
A dragline digs around the wellhead until the crew can reach sound pipe below the damaged equipment. Water stays on the work as the excavation exposes hot ground. The old head is damaged and crooked. It has to come off while gas continues to escape.
Men work beside the stream of gas with goggles on. They strip away sections of pipe and use cutting equipment to get the damaged head off. The machinery, the casing, and the men are all crowded into the same small working area.
The operator's drilling engineer, Le Blanc, stays with the job. Adair singles him out in his account. Together, the crews are exposing the connection that will take the replacement equipment.
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CHAPTER 06
Against the flow
The replacement head must seal around the pipe and grip it tightly enough to stay put under pressure. The crew assembles and checks it before taking it to the well.
A boom supports the head as lines pull it down over the pipe. The crew works the assembly into place against the escaping gas. Then comes the blowout preventer: the equipment that gives them a means of shutting the flow path.
The crew fastens the connections beside the flowing well. Safety engineers check for gas. The head and preventer are in place; the next step is to close the upward path and divert the flow.
CHAPTER 07
Control
The crew closes the preventer, directing the gas into controlled flow lines. Red Adair narrates the moment himself.
And this is what you waited six months to do.
Mud is then part of securing the well. Its weight can provide pressure inside the hole to oppose the reservoir. The surface equipment controls the opening; the fluid helps control what is feeding it.
CHAPTER 08
The names on the door
By nineteen sixty-eight, Adair, Boots and Coots were technical advisers on John Wayne's Hellfighters. In nineteen seventy-eight, Boots and Coots opened their own company. Matthews's obituary recounts a coin toss: Coots became president, and Boots's name went first.
